The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 53: Strata Pt 2 (Eternal FOMO)

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, we continue our Proto-Pratchett season with part 2 of our recap of “Strata”. Humanity! Immortality! A Really Massive Turtle! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Aspidochelone - WikiFastitocalon - Council of ElrondDefamiliarization/ostranenie - Penn State University Meme - Britannica H.I. #91: Last Man to Die?Why Die? - CGP Grey YouTubeBrowse the Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage - UNESCOMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

fucking hubris again. There's been some more casting announced for the upcoming amazing Morris movie. I know David Tennant is now attached to it. David Tennant and someone else are recognised. Amelia Clark. Yes. She's linked to it. I think she's pretty good stage actor. I can imagine she would be. She's going to be in a production of The Seagull before COVID happened. Yeah. She's got the clearly came up from stage vibes. Yeah. So Amelia Clark is voicing Melissa. I don't really remember the book. It's one I've read quite a lot, but I guess you wouldn't have. Himesh Patel, who I've never heard of, is voicing Keith, the sort of main character. Oh, Gemma Rasseton's voicing Peach is the Rat. She is very pretty. She's in lots of things.

I'm good. Yeah. Very pretty. Good voice actor. Yeah. She did one of the voices in the Watership Down remake thing that the BBC put out at some point last year, I think. I didn't know they did that. Maybe you told me. It's not bad. It's not quite as horrifying as the original, just in that the original haunts us all. Oh, yes. Any listeners who haven't seen Watership Down yet, by the way, be very interested to know how traumatised you are if you watched it for the first time as an adult. Yeah, obviously I'm warning you now, it's traumatising. So don't blame me. Yeah. And it gave me full on nightmares as a kid. I remember regular nightmares about the whole thing that was going to eat the sun. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. See, I didn't get that bad

with it. We watched it in school. Really? Yeah. My dad let me watch it and got thoroughly told off. So I must have been pretty young. Yeah. I don't remember how young I was, but it was definitely primary school. I don't know when it came out, actually. I'm not going to look that up, because otherwise I'm just going to spend our entire self-life and sitting here googling. So you're back into pride if you have regrown your chef's calluses in the last two days? Yes, yes. I am a fully functioning chef again. The big ridiculous hat now magically sprouts from my head whenever I enter the premises. I heard on a podcast that each of the 100 traditional folds in a chef's hat is to do with a different way of cooking eggs.

Could be true. Never worn one. I wear a bandana. So you know one way to cook eggs, that's what you're saying. I think that was on no such thing as a fish, actually. I have a selection of bandanas at work, so does each one count as a method of how many ways do I know to cook eggs? Yeah, so this is the conversation they had, I think, but none of them were chefs. I mean also, how are you defining this? Are you defining this purely as egg-based dishes or dishes with eggs in? Egg-based dishes, surely. Okay, but what point does an egg-based dish become a dish with eggs in? Like quiche is a bit borderline, isn't it? I would say no, because the defining feature of a quiche is the eggs. Okay, fine. You cannot have quiche without egg. There is no

substitute. Well, there's no need. They don't eat quiche. I'm sure I've read a vegan quiche recipe. Every egg replacement I found outside of baking has been pretty bad. Yeah, apart from scrambled tofu, I do like instead of scrambled eggs. That's very nice. Yeah, I feel like vegan quiche is similar, like it uses tofu. Oh, right. There are some foods I just feel like I just don't bother trying to eat anymore now I don't eat meat, so I feel like it's probably the same with eggs. I mean, eggs, I feel like are probably the lowest ethically problematic one if you're getting them from a decent place. Yeah, I mean, let's not get deep on the podcast, but yeah. Let's not get deep on the podcast that involves in the show notes. What is humanity? Let's not

get deep on this end of the podcast, like we're starting in the shallow end, we're paddling out, we're paddling out, and then there's one of those like undersea cliffs, we're not going to see come in, we're going to go out there and then suddenly infinity is below us, the depths of the ocean, we don't know what's down there, shanks with tentacles, little lights on their heads, you know, fish that only look okay under that much pressure when you bring them up, they're just like blobs. That is the tail end of this podcast, but for now, quiche. The metaphor was going really well until we came back to quiche. Yeah, I wanted to bring us back for more like, we completely killed our listeners who have that what do you call it phobia of deep sea. I have no idea what the

phobia is called, but I relate to it deep sea is terrifying. Oh, yeah. Yeah, obviously. Actually, scary things are scary, but yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't have a phobia of it, because I'm very unlikely to ever end up there. Yes. And I'm pretty sure they can't get me from here on the basis, we're quite far inland. No, chances are low, but never zero. I have an anglophish coming through your door. Speaking of, oh, there's a knock at the door. Or more of like a schlup. Oh, a schlup at the door. Pretty light. And that's how I'm going to die. Oh, there are worse ways. Right, so. Do you want to make a podcast? Yes. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I'm feeling optimistic. Let's make a podcast.

Hello, and welcome to the Two Shall Make Keyfret, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time, in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today, we are continuing our proto-Pratchett season with part two of our discussion of Strata. Yeah, it's deeper into the earth we go. On the earth, into the earth. Yeah, no, still into the earth. Yeah, metaphorically, actually. In, on, under, and many other prepositions feature in this fantastic book. You should write blurbs. I'm just glad I can remember what a preposition is. What a preposition in your band series. Oh, we're doing well so far. We are not good when we record

at different times of day. It's five o'clock here, listeners. And all is not well. Yeah, the witching hour. The witching hour being 7 p.m. when I start cooking dinner. Note on spoilers before we crack on. Obviously, this is a spoiler-like podcast. Heavy spoilers for Strata, the book we're on. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Through a baffling series of underground cabins, staffed by confusing robots. And on a mechanical horse. And that, yes. Tell us what happened previously on Strata. Previously on Strata. Double Centurion

planet builder, Kin Aher, takes up an offer of a strange adventure to an impossible world. Why not? Joined by Kung Slash Human Marco and diplomatic Shandy Silver, she boards a ship for the journey to a Discworld. Their guide, one of the first interstellar travellers, kicks the bucket almost immediately. And the unlikely trio crash land on a flat replica of Earth. They meet some Norse explorers, realise that Flat Earth's timeline isn't very long yet. And head off Hubwood to find out what the hell's happening. Excellent. Well done. That was as little detail as I could put in. I, on the other hand, have kept some more detail in. Yes, I thought that might happen. So, Joanna, would you like to, well, you have to tell us

what happens in this section. Look, I've done my best. A lot happens in the second half. This is a really good book, but I kind of regret not splitting it into three. We went based on length that we could do two, like we did with the dark side of the sun. But I don't know. I think just, like immediate plot points, yes, it would be three, but I feel like discussion points, I still think two's better. Yeah. Anyway, Godspeed. In part two of Strata. Our intrepid trio head inwards to the hub. The raven follows as a mysterious island turns out to be a turtle and smoke rises over what might be central Europe. As the disc's mechanisms appear to fail, Kin fears the company is to blame. The pillar of smoke from the crash

ship continues to loom. On a break for a bath, Kin submits to capture by priests and bandits, and it's taken to a nearby town to await trial for the crime of being not of this world. As Kin awaits rescue from jail, Silver fills her in on the state of the disc, currently filled with panic at a potential second coming. A psychic demon joins Kin in a neighbouring jail cell. Marco attacks and Kin gets out with Svando the demon in tow as they take flight once more. Silver notices their distant COVID companion. On a break in a burned out village, Kin realises that Svando travels by matter's transmission. During a demonic interrogation, we learn that no one, and we mean no one, goes to the hub. Svando is let go as our ragtag

bunch of mismatched misfits continue on. Closer to the smoke, they come across a hole in the world. Lightning takes out the dumbwaiter as a scarecrow rears its head. As they get closer to the hub and fly over what might be Baghdad, the gas runs out, leaving our travellers earthbound. Thankfully, an Alibaba-ressed disc-denison, complete with flying carpet, rescues them and takes them to a handy oasis. A genie and a magic table provide almost anything they could wish for, except appropriate food for silver. We learn that Abu, their saviour, is a collector, sending his genie out hunting for technological artefacts which he believes to be gifts from God. With the bitter memory of a visit from Jego Jalo in mind, Abu takes the trio hostage,

leaving Kin in the Harim and Marco and Silver in the zoo. Kin escapes the Harim and finds a not magical flying horse, using it to rescue Marco and Silver and fighting off demons with a magic sword. With the aid of the genie, they finally make it to the dome at the centre of the earth, where magic doesn't work. As the world destroys itself and they make their approach, they disappear into the dome itself. In the dome, Kin destroys robots for attention, finds Marco and Silver, and literally fights off death before an explosion lands her in the control room. Marco waits post-explosion and finds a dumbwaiter ready to feed both him and Silver. Robots sent by Kin lead him in the no longer starving Shandy on a two-day walk to the centre

of the dome, where they find Kin and a waiting ship. Kin explains, via flashback, what has happened in the last two days. She's met the committee at the centre of the disk. In exchange for knowledge of the true nature of the universe and a working ship off the disk, Kin promises to return and build a newer, better planet for the disk's occupants. As they aim for the hole in the bio hemisphere and assisted by a legendary rock as they prepare to take off, Kin explains the truth. The disk is the nuclear disarmament dinosaur in the strata, proof that the universe is and always has been a made thing. The builders created it 70,000 years ago and history is just clever clues from creators. With the truth revealed and new worlds to build, the trio take off.

Yeah, I think I'd like to do it. I think twice in the last 20 pages or whatever it was. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's a bit of a thing, like we have the similar thing with Dark Side of the Sun that the jokers were revealed to have been there all along. And a bit of a sci-fi thing, I think Hitchhikers had the similar, it was the mice all along. It does seem like the sci-fi version of, and I woke up and it had all been a dream. The real truth of the universe is the friends we made along the way. Yeah. So what did you think, like, let's do an overall, like what did you reckon in the last bit of the book, the last latter half? When I just read the book, like the peek behind the curtain for listeners of how I plan these episodes is I read the entire book,

then I go through per section before we record each episode, put all my post-its in and write the plan from that. So yeah, when I read the entire book, I really liked the denouement and how it all came together. Yeah. Going through and doing post-its, so much happens and disparate things happens and it's very hard to keep track of events that I enjoyed it less. Right. Okay. It's quite stuttery. Yeah, that's, I read and do notes at the same time, but obviously I don't have to try and make summaries that's not quite the same. But yeah, I did not enjoy the second half as much as the first half. It was a little chaotic, which isn't always a bad thing, but I don't know, it seemed to be propelling along for the sake of it at some points, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think

I enjoyed the setup more than the payoff. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. I like the characters less and I liked the pacing less, I think. But then like, obviously the pacing was going to change its setup to, as you said, payoff. Yeah. I think some of it, the two taken hostage bits made it stutter. Yes, I think that's it. Yeah. And I think like, you can see where Pratt should improve as a writer. A friend of the pod, Mark Burrows, on Twitter pointed out like, as he was rereading the book and listening along, you could see how Pratt should improve so much as a writer and started sticking to sort of a central theme and plot for a book. Whereas like, you try and explain what happens here. And it's sort of a, I think Mark used the phrase, fucking loads, mate.

Yeah, I was really enjoying that in the first half of the book, like that's kind of, that works for my weird ADHD brain that's like, Oh, this is happening. And this is happening. And this is happening. I see. Yeah. But as you say, because it kept stuttering, I was like, Oh, what? Yeah, we sort of started aggressively interrogating how religion works on the disc. And then we started aggressively interrogating the meaning of life. And then suddenly, we're doing a parody of Alibaba, but not really. Enough there. You can see Terry Pratt, it kind of like almost flickering into fantasy a few times, doesn't it? It's like, he's trying with all his might to write sci-fi, but it's like, Oh, fantasy.

Oh, a little bit of magic. Oh, is it magic though? Yeah, there's a great line when Kin finds the mechanical horse, and she's sort of like, how do you actually work? And then he explains, and she's like, good, she was willing to believe anything as long as it wasn't magic. Like anti-Rentzwind sentiment. Yes. Well, it's the famous quote, isn't it? Anything, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Hmm. Yes. And the other laws that nobody ever quit. Right, so. Helicopter and loincloth watch. Obviously, many things fly, but I am choosing the, uh, swinging the ship around the bottom of the world to get it to take off with the

assistance of a giant legendary bird as my helicopter for the episode. Sure, absolutely. No loincloth, but you know, there is an actual loincloth. Fuck, did I miss a loincloth? Page 203. Oh, what the hell? I'm wondering why there wasn't like an overexcited bit in the show plan. I was really tired when I did the notes. There you go. His craft was technologically advanced, and he knew how to use it. At the moment, it was folded up inside a pouch on the belt of his traveling companion, a large broad man wearing nothing but a loincloth and a dower expression. Yeah, I think at that point, I had completely disassociated because I forgot what had happened in the previous 10 pages and had to go back. So, uh, I am so sincerely,

sincerely apologetic to the listeners for, uh... Well, you don't need to be. I picked up. I picked up. It's fine. It's fine. They didn't miss out on the loincloth action. I'm sure that's all they listened for, but as long as we get it across. Yeah, everyone actually stops listening to the episode after helicopter and loincloth watch. It's the most important part of the podcast. It's very bad for our stats. Maybe we should put it later in the episode. Please listen to the rest. We say interesting things. Wait, sorry. I'm just going to rip on us. Yeah, why are you feeling so bloody self-deprecating today? Pick it up, mate. Ego. Ego.

I just need more coffee and I'll be fine. By the end of the episode, I'll love myself. Oh, good. Yes, quotes. Anyway, yours is probably first month right near the end. Yeah, mine is first. This is Kin and Silver getting a bit philosophical. We all think we understand each other, Kin heard Silver say. We eat together, we trade. Many of us pride ourselves on having alien friends, but all this is only possible because we do not fully comprehend the other. You've studied Earth history. Do you think you could understand the workings of the mind of a Japanese warrior a thousand years ago? But here's is a twin to you compared with Marco or myself. When we use the word cosmopolitan,

we use it too lightly. It's flippant. It means we're galactic tourists who communicate in superficialities. We don't comprehend different worlds, Kin, different angles of gravity and radiation and evolution. So yes, it's like a sequel to last week's quote, isn't it? It's more of the yeah, it's like a more in-depth. Yeah. And I like that aspect of the book. I really like how it keeps interrogating the relationship between the humans and the other. I do. It almost feels like that aspect of it should have a conclusion, but of course it couldn't. Yeah, there's just not time for it. I'm not sure there's enough time in the world to tie up that that concept, but turns out colonialism was the villain all along. Oh, no. God damn it. Yeah, no, that was

a bit of that at the end, wasn't there? If you leave anything long enough, everyone must become the same by necessity, wasn't it? Something like that. Yeah, I'll get on to that a bit more later. Okay, cool. What was yours? Mine is when Kin is standing in front of the computer going, I'm going to put that helmet on. That seems a little risky. And the computer says, we trust you, trust us. The helmet will link you to certain circuits designed for this situation. We can give you not information, but knowledge that you will obtain nowhere else in the universe. The purpose of life is to find things out, said Kim doubtfully. Yes, who would shun knowledge? Kin side reached up, grasped, pulled. But again, seems very much like the sequel to the one I

picked last week, but it's just a, yeah, obviously I'm going to do this and find out. I mean, obviously. I don't doubt there are some people in the world who would not take massive risks in the pursuit of otherwise impossible knowledge, but they wouldn't make very good protagonists. I'd now quite like the idea of writing that now. Someone who's just determined to not have anything happened to them and yet. Well, that's Rist Rentsman. Oh, yeah, good point. I mean, you can still write it, but Terry Bradshaw's done it already. Okay, so characters, characters. Obviously, we don't meet that many new people and a lot of these are little moments, but I liked the elf moment. Yeah, the elf praying mantis-y, foreign

thing. Yeah, I like sort of building this. This is again, project kind of slipping into fantasy. Yes, the elf that looks like an elf when it's playing its music and hypnotizing you and then you realize it's actually a creepy bug. That was sort of a nicer, you can see where some of Lords and Ladies was coming in. Yeah. Yeah. And I like the way fantasy kind of keeps cropping up. I do and I don't. It's a little disconcerting for me because yeah, and I like sci-fi. I really liked this start like as a sci-fi book and whereas obviously it's still good as well written, I am like, I know I'm trying to read Strata, not the colour of magic. Yeah. Rewind of it, come on.

See, for me, because I'm not that I'm not a sci-fi fan, but I'm much more of a fantasy fan than a sci-fi fan. As it starts slipping into little bits of fantasy and discolour, it's a bit like, oh, this is a bit more comfortable for me. Yeah. It's like sticking an extra cushion on when you're dozing on the set. Then having said that, I very much enjoyed like the little alternate history references and things like that. So yeah, I like, I mean, I always like sort of weird takes on earth history. It's fun. Yeah. In other words, we have Brickface who eventually is named as Lothar. He captures Kin first. Yes. It was sort of the bandit leader that's taken some priests under his protection as well. Yeah. And that was that was mostly fun for the description. He was

short and built like a wall, even his skin was brick coloured. A thatch of yellow hair and wide moustaches framed eyes that glitted enough to remind Kin that intelligence didn't necessarily start with an industrial revolution. Indeed. So yes, he was a fun side character. And then we have Svandoor, the demon. Yes, the AI kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah, it's kind of a big AI. He believes in himself, but it's quite clear there are limitations placed upon him by whoever made him. Yes. And this whole idea of demons on the disc is a way to make it work and keep people in line. Yeah. Yeah. And kind of physical manifestation of the thing is we all get a bit scared of. Not that demons aren't real, of course. I 100% believe in them.

Yes, yes, we just don't see them out and about much. No, I plan on becoming one one day. Then we have the raven. Yeah, we have little Norse, little Norse nod. Well, hint of Norse there. Obviously, I love a Quaith the Raven joke. Of course, of course. Quaith the Raven, you're the bastard that don't meet in the vacuum. Yep, doesn't quite fit in with the meter, but I'll add it as another line to the poem. Yeah, let's have known original first draft of that poem. Yes. That poem, don't mention it. Who's that bastard not knocking at my chamber door? Oh, it's you. You're a bastard. No, there's no camels.

And then Abby Ibu Infra? Yes, also known as Alibaba, the guy who, this is the, you know, where I mentioned the whole technology is magic thing, where I like him as an example of how the disc works, where he's started finding these magic, to him, magical things. They're actually very advanced technology. Yeah, yeah. And he has decided they must be gifts from God. Yes. And then set out to acquire as many as possible in a very greedy manner. Yeah. So supply side Christianity. Yeah. So gifts from God exist. I must have all of them. Which of those magical objects would you, would you want for your own home? I'm guessing not the table, because like you like to cook, you don't want to make yourself redundant.

Right now I want the table, but that's because I'm tired from work and really sick of coming home and cooking for myself. But I think I want the flying horse. Yeah, that's, that's be honest. Everyone wants a flying horse. I always wanted a flying horse provided like it is very well secured. So I can't fall off the flying horse. You're not big on Narnia, are you? I have read them all, but they're not my go to. The horse and his boy and the magician's nephew would be the horsey, horsey books there. Ah, yes. In fact, weirdly, those are the two I've read the most. Oh, there you go. Which are the ones that fit least into the story. I'll tell you what, the magician's nephew, that is a satisfying prequel. Well done T.S. Lewis. It is. I'm always

really gusty when it gets adapted, but the magician's nephew never gets adapted. And I understand why, because it doesn't really have any other characters in the same way from the rest of them. Yeah, yeah. And it, but it would make a nice little standalone thing, wouldn't it? Maybe not a full, maybe a full movie. I don't know. I'd see it as like a sort of bit of a mini series. I think I'd make it as the prequel after I'd done the rest of the series almost because it's satisfying because it fills in the gaps, not because it's such an amazing story. Yeah, it's nice reading them and reading the main arc and then going back and reading the magician's nephew. For sure. However, we're not on Narnia podcast. Oh, yeah, right. That's right.

So death is here. Death. Which means, was there a grim repertile character somewhere in Dark Side of the Sun? Oh, not that I recall, but I don't remember a lot of that book already. So, all right. So, well, okay, well, we've got a, as with this is Proto Discworld specifically, we can still say we haven't had a Discworld book without death in. It's got a power side, the mechanics of which I don't quite understand. Yeah, how do you? That's it. Like, I don't know. I feel like you put that in for it to be a high tech thing, but then I'm not a farmer. Hashtag not a farmer. I'm kind of imagining it could make a scythe, but it's like a bit of a chainsaw around the top. Well, it's not a scythe anymore, then, is it? Well, it's scythe shaped, but the blade just has

what if the chainsaw is like each little pointy bit that comes up is like a really tiny scythe? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like he was kind of trying to make a point about like the large scale death in the same way that he did properly in Reaper Man, and it felt short, but anyone who knows about mechanical sides, please get in touch because weird farm equipment is something I'm vaguely interested in. Yeah, so the moment I'm mostly picturing, he's just wielding like a combine harvester on a stick. Oh, yeah, sure. Why not? I don't know what a molecule stripper is either, but I was imagining that almost as a strimmer. So let's just make everything garden. And then death appeared wielding a particularly sharp pair of secateurs.

Oh, no, I've got secateurs for hands. Sorry, I've been aware that I came wrong. Oh, right. And then the rock, not that rock, a different rock. A rock with, okay, the only reason I really put this in is the rocks are quite famously huge legendary birds that I had never heard of till I started regularly doing the New York Times crossword. Right. Because almost every time the clue legendary bird comes up in the crossword, it is rock. And so I did eventually Google it a few weeks ago when it came out, I think I started doing the crosswords whenever somewhere near the beginning of lockdown, because you were doing it and am easily led. And I think it was like something like the fifth or sixth time it came

up a couple of weeks ago, I eventually Googled what they were. And yeah, massive birds. Mostly sort of Arabian and the Middle Eastern mythology. I think I did the Google them a long time ago because it turned out a couple of the legendary bird Pokemon were kind of modeled on them. Yeah. But I don't remember any of the details. So I'm going to go with it's just like Zapdos them because that was my favorite of the legendary birds. I liked Maltres. Maltres did have a very solid aesthetic to be fair. But I quite like the idea of taking a risk if you're leading with an electric Pokemon. I wouldn't necessarily lead with Zapdos. I just thought it looked cool because it looked like an angry awkward ungainly bird, whereas the other two were very pretty. Yeah. Oh, that's

cool. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. I do like electric Pokemon. I think if I was going to be a gym leader, I'd be that but like you'd lose all the time. Yeah, they're really easy to beat. You just need a rock Pokemon. Anyway, we're not, we're also not a Pokemon girl. Not a nine if I'll cast, not a Pokemon. Fuck. I came here to talk about the Discworld novel Terry, talk about the non-Discworld novel Strata and drink coffee and I still have coffee but I'm talking Strata. I'm all out of brain cells. Jego Jado. I mean, they've still got him somewhere. Oh, no. I thought the entire ship is fucked now. Oh, yeah. No, so he's just like dead somewhere. Rip. F in the chat for Jego Jado. It seems, again, I think it's like practically they didn't have

the, and I'm not even going to say writing, I'm going to say editing skills that he eventually had because I feel like the whole little bit about him being put in deep freeze and they weren't sure whether to or not kind of wasn't, was leading something that didn't happen. Yeah. And there was a set up that didn't pay off and even if it was just a bit more angst about the fact he died now, it was like, oops, made a bit cold in the end. Yeah. You could have, you could almost remove the character entirely. It would be harder. Yeah, I, yes, yeah, it would be, but I mean, yeah, he's the, the catalyst, the catalyst. Thank you. Yes, he's the catalyst. He's what gets them to the disc, but there's very, he found it. Yeah. There's

very little payoff. All the always sort of the only further thing we find out about him is that he was mad. He was obviously mad. We had not considered that any race would send its madmen into space in a ship like this, only a madman would go. He killed the chairman, and the committee basically kind of go like, yeah, we didn't really want him, but we needed someone to turn up. So we figured setting that loose cannon out into the world. Yeah. Yeah. I would have been nice if his motivation had been fleshed out a bit more than mad and wanted riches. Yeah. Oh, God, there's so much I wish Terry Practrick could have written for sci-fi. I want to hear his like, clearly that he's got a take on AI, like he's written enough

about AI that I can see his, he's got a take, but he never got to actualize the take. Yeah. I would like to take that name. Oh, I like that. I would love to read more Pratchety's sci-fi like in his later writing years when he sort of learned to edit and what have you. Yeah. I might happily write, read a lot more of this, but. Well, yes. And then the only character I really wanted to revisit in this bit was Kin and particularly her anger at the disc being so badly made. Yeah. I will say, before we go into the anger bit, I agree more with people's critical view of Kin in the second half because she seemed very contradictory and messy and hypocritical. Yeah. With the whole, oh, I'm so sad that Kong did violence, also gonna do casual violence.

Yeah. She was, she was built up really well. I mean, I did like her character in the first half as much as I agree with a lot of mass criticisms, but yeah, she doesn't, it's really plot first in this latter half of the book. And as a result, she doesn't stay in one character because she's sort of doing what the plot needs. And I think there's also this idea of let's have some cool fight scenes. Yeah, which I never enjoy reading and practically never really does again. Apart from proper, you know, barstool across the head stuff, which is always a bit more interesting than everyone's good at fighting. Yeah, there was one line when she's sort of in something of a lack of gravity and she's got the magic sword. The sword jerked and Kin jumped feeling her body

curved behind the blade like the tail of a comet. I don't agree with her, you know, suddenly getting into casual violence, but I really like that line. Casual violence, the thumbs down in the handbook of it. Yeah, no eugenics, no casual violence, still yes on cake. Still yes on cake. Okay, good, good. Yeah, like to check in periodically. So anger, anger at the disc then, what was your thoughts on that? There's a couple of interesting moments where she gets really furious. As one where she's pointing out to silver that you can't evolve a good science on the disc. I think she says science is supposed to be the tool with which you can unscrew the universe, but disc science is only fit for the disc. It's stagnant. Yes. And then later on, she starts to just talk about

really, really hating it, not just that she doesn't want to be there. And obviously she's not having the best time. No, I don't understand. She keeps getting kidnapped and somehow naked. I actually stopped noticing when she was naked or not. It's not so much I noticed when she was naked. I noticed when she was naked and then didn't reacquire clothes because I just kept thinking she's like she must be cold. And if, where's the line? If we get back, I won't care who built the disc. I'll see that they're broken, busted and bankrupted. They built a world people sail off the edge of and get chased by demons and the superstitious because that's how they survived. And it's her anger here because she, and I think part of it is her having to, she's starting to reckon here that obviously

the universe is bigger than she's understood. And she's been alive for two centuries. She does sort of feel like she knows everything there is to know about the universe. Yeah, especially she's the one who wrote the theory that everyone loves so much. Exactly. And how the sapient races fit into it. So as much as on the surface, her anger is that the disc doesn't work. And I get that, I especially get that fury at the, the demons and curious people sailing off the edge. Yeah, because she, I mean, she's a craft person, isn't she? She is, she is watching someone be very bad at her job, which puts a lot of pride into us was kind of set up in the very beginning. And it feels, I think, to her, like someone is almost being bad at it intentionally.

It's not that someone is bad at building planets. It's that someone has built an intentionally bad planet as some kind of experiment. It's like if someone like made a sandwich that exploded and you were like, why? Yeah, you did not. It's not what sandwiches do. Oh, I want a sandwich. Sorry, don't mention food to me, Francine. Sorry. But what frustrating is then you get to the end of the book and she's learned the reason and she's obviously she's still kind of shocked and reeling and dealing with it. But you never see her really reckon with, you know, she's now found the people who built this, who built this shoddily made disk where curious people get sent off the edge. And apart from thinking, right, okay, no more demons, you don't see her confront the

committee in any way. The committee didn't do it, did they? I think she finds out in time that they're caretakers not and because they immediately do seem to care what's happening to the people, like, yeah, help us save them. But yeah, she doesn't go, well, what the fuck was your creative thinking? Yeah, yeah, she doesn't let that go. I would have liked to have seen her reckon with that a bit more. You do like a reckoning, Joanna. Oh, I said that about you, Joanna. She likes a reckoning. Reckoning Joanna, that's what they don't call me. And that takes us very neatly into locations, which this didn't really need to be a separate thing. But I sort of I wanted to talk more about the truth in the gallery and the disc and the

builders and they seem like as good a place to put it in as any shorting sugar pie. Sugar pie. Yeah, I don't know. It's like, let's not do that one again. I've quickly first as Marco and Silver are walking through when they come across the gallery, I where they could see the disc. I quite like that moment. Because it reminded me of among many things, obviously hitchhikers. Yeah, yeah. When he sees the sort of the earth being built. Yes, they don't obviously have the same reaction on account for like, it's interesting, little switch away narratively actually as well wasn't it? Because we mentioned

last time there was any one brief switch away from Keirnaz narrator, or not as narrator, but as focus and obviously it happens quite a long time. Yeah, I quite like the sort of switch back and forth at the end and then Kim recounting the flashback. Yeah, yeah. As she's also explaining like that we've got to get into the ship and go like now. Yeah. It all works really well. But yeah, the committee in the truth. So the big reveal in literally the last 20 pages of the book Yeah. is that the spindle kings weren't real. The wheelers that came before them weren't real. That builders had made the universe the way humans make planets now. Yeah. And the disc was their equivalent of when someone's building a planet they put boots in the coal scene or a nuclear

disarmament dinosaur. You really like that phrase, do you? You noticed. I'm going to make you a jumper with it. Yes, please. That can be my existential crisis jumper. Sorry, it's too warm in here. I can wear my existential crisis jumper today. As much as like, yeah, I feel like this second half of the book could be better written because it was written by a very young comparatively Terry Bradshaw. I do really like this plot twist. Yeah. Yeah, this sort of it's not quite creationism. It's 70,000 years, not 4,000 or whatever. It's still creationism. It's just the universe creation. Yeah. Yeah, right. Fine. I think it's the book tries and does I think quite well to interrogate what humanity is and what it wants. And I think to

pull the rug out underneath and say, well, yeah, that's what humanity is like. And this is what the builders were like. They not building wouldn't have occurred to them. Yeah. And to take that parallel of humanities spreading across the universe building planets as it goes. And to imagine then the Russian doll effect of the bigger version. Yeah. Going through something else and building universes as it goes. Yeah. I kind of like it and that it's clever. And yes, I like the rug being pulled out kind of viable. I didn't like it because I really liked Kin's theory with the idea of the galaxies being life a billion years ago. Oh, cool for help from our listeners, actually. I've got one of those tip

of my tongue sci fi moment kind of things because once upon a time I read and it may have been a prologue. It may have been the start of a chapter, but it was a lovely descriptive passage of the first few fractions of a second or possibly the first couple of minutes of the universe and the rise of rise and fall of civilizations within that and the war between dark matter and normal matter, I think. And and I feel like the chapter like wrapped up with saying something like and then the universe was two minutes old or something like that. And it might be Stephen Baxter. If it is, I can't remember which book. So help me out here sci fi fans. It took like literally this took an hour of my research time trying to remember what this was because I remember it being

such a good passage and it would have fit so well. Really hard to Google that. I remember this good bit and it was a bit like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you're trying to remember the name of a piece of classical music and it's not like a normal song because you can't google the lyrics. That bit that goes da da da dum. Yeah. So it might be something in Stephen Baxter's early sequence. I know there's dark matter civilization in there. But as far as I remember, those series books only go back a couple billion years. I don't know. I don't know. Help me out guys. But yeah, I think that was all I had to say. I just I like the plot twist. It could have been better executed, but I like it as an idea. Yeah, I do. I just got sad that the other

overarching theory that we got like little hints of until it finally got revealed as well. So I was quite attached to it. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like I work for it, reading a whole hundred pages. I mean, I'll miss the concept of the spindle kings, but they'll live on in our hearts. Right. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. Island turtle. Island turtle, do I know? They land on what appears to be an island and it turns out to be a giant turtle. Yes, that did happen. Tell me more about that. Well, I knew that there were references to this in mythology, lots of different mythologies, as it turns out, because it was even a like brief plot point in Avatar the last airbender, which draws a lot from fun mythology and history

things. But the version of it from history slash mythology that I got a bit stuck on, and I apologise, I'm definitely going to say this wrong. Aspidocolone. Celloan. Celloan, probably. As in like turtle, like decolonian mobile. So yeah, I think Aspidocolone, which popped up in lots of medieval bestiaries. And it comes from Aspis means shield, and then obviously Cologne means turtle. And in sort of mythology and bestiaries, it would lurk pretending to be an island, and then when ships tie up to it, it would drown them. Sometimes it's a giant turtle, sometimes it could be a whale. There's an old English poem that I am not going to attempt to read on podcast because I can't read old English.

Much obliged. You can listen to me stutter through it if you want. The poem is called Physiologist. The Whale. Physiologist. The Whale. But in it, the monster is referred to as Faustita, sorry, Faustita Celloan. Tolkien, eventually. I said so confidently about the hard kerf there, and I know we talked about it in small gods, and I can't remember where we settled. Sorry. Well, Faustita Celloan doesn't have the H, so I'm going to go with a hard C. Tolkien has a Faustita Celloan in poem in the adventures of Tom Bombadil about a giant sea turtle. Yeah. And quote from Tolkien. By etymology, the name Faustita Celloan is a corruption of the Greek Aspidocolon round-shielded turtle,

with the addition of the letter F, according to Tolkien, simply to make the name illiterate, as was compulsory for poets in his day, with the other words in his line, with the other words in his line. Tolkien commented that the tale of the monster that treacherously simulates an island is from the east, and the turtle is mixed up with a whale when the story arrives in Europe, so the Old English version has him feeding like a whale, despite probably being a turtle. Cool. And I have the poem handy if you'd like to hear it. It's not very long. The Tolkien one? Yes. Yes, I will hear the Tolkien one, please. Yeah, I'm not going to subject you to Old English. I agreed. You've done a quick change of my then, though. Yes, please. Tolkien always.

Look, there is Faustita Celloan, an island good to land upon, although it is rather bare. Come leave the sea and let us run or dance or lie down in the sun. See, gulls are sitting there. Beware, gulls do not sink. There they may sit or strut and prink. Their part it is to tip the wink if anyone should dare upon that isle to settle, or only for a while to get relief from sickness or the wet, or maybe boil a kettle. Our foolish folk who land on him and little fires proceed to trim and hope perhaps for tea. It may be that his shell is thick. He seems to sleep, but he is quick and floats now in the sea with guile. And when he hears their tapping feet, or faintly feels the sudden heat with smile, he dives. And promptly turning upside down,

he tips them off and deep they drown and lose their silly lives to their surprise. Be wise. There are many monsters in the sea, but none so perilous as he. Old horny Faustita Celloan, whose mighty kindred all have gone, the last of the old turtlefish. So if to save your life you wish, then I advise, pay heed to sailor's ancient laws, set foot on no uncharted shore, or better yet, or better still, your days at peace on Middle Earth in mirth for full. Heat your heart out Lewis Carroll. Yeah. I like that. Good old Tom Bombadil. Good old Tom Bombadil. That's my new favourite poem about giant turtles. Oh well, replacing the old favourite of course. Yes, the old English one, I can't pronounce. Oh okay, I see. Physiologious.

I like that too. I like more now. Yes, thank you. And then my next one was seeds, seeds for the future, as in things that might crop up again in Discworld. Ah okay, yes. Which you like. Less I noted in this section than in the first section, apart from again the obvious disc. I like the sort of idea of the religion as seen through fresh eyes, which is this trope that every time it comes up on the podcast about how we're seeing something through fresh eyes that we know about but the characters don't and it makes it very interesting. I go, I know there's a word for that and at some point before the next episode we look it up. Yeah. I cannot tell you what the word is. Oh, I've done it. I've looked it up a million times. Yep. I'd have got to have.

Let me see if I bookmarked it this time. Unfortunately, I think no, I did not bookmark that, but I will. I might look it up and actually for, it's a very rare occurrence edit myself in saying the answer because it's pissing me off so much now. The word I'm completely failing to recall here is defamiliarization or astronomy as coined by the Russian formalists in the early 20th century. It is basically presenting a common thing or concept in a new way so as to bring the audience new perspective. It's more commonly used in order to distinguish poetry or art, so it's possibly not the best term to use here, perhaps it's technique of showing a familiar scene through alien eyes, but it's the best I can think of at the moment. Excellent. And so we have this moment

where they're sort of having to confront religion because Kin's been kidnapped by priests. It's a strange religion. Everyone is evil until proved holy. Yes. He's telling me that Lothar's God is returning and he's thinking of nothing but pillage, probably rape and murder as well. Cute. And I like this idea of, you know, what would happen if the rapture was actually happening. Yeah. The lack of goodness shown in the in the religious sell-its being again the... Yeah. And not that I would turn to rape and pillage during the rapture, but I feel like I I wouldn't assume I was going to be taken up and I'd just sort of try and make the best of things down here. Yeah. Yeah. Not sure what depends on the nature of rapture, I suppose, doesn't it?

It's more information on the specific rapture before I make my plans, but likewise, I seem I'm not going to be taken up. And then memeatomology. Yeah. So when we are talking about something, we'll go into it more later on, but about preserving the ideas of humanity. Kin mentioned meme pools and that reminded me that obviously the word meme has been around a little bit longer than the internet, but not so much longer than you as you'd think maybe. No. It's it comes from the Greek meme, that which is imitated. So basically, it's ideas, knowledge that sticks. Sticky stuff. And the word meme itself was coined by Richard Dawkins in 76. Yeah. And after that, I think the study of memetics was because I think that was the 80s, wasn't it? Again,

and then the internet. And then the internet. And now we have so many memes. I do love a meme. Yes. But I suppose loosely one meme could be things like folklore and nursery rhymes and things like that. Yeah, that's what it was originally. That's what he was, well, not specifically nursery rhymes, but that was what he was talking about in the selfish gene. It was the idea of something like genetics. And it was, it was, it is from the Greek, but it's it's based on the word gene. Yeah, to make it more linguistically similar, like citizen and citizen. And he effectively describes it as the ephemeral version of genes passing down. That's not a direct quote. It's been a long time since I read the selfish gene, but it's the idea of it's like genetics. So again,

memetics, genetics, the similarity. It's like genetics, but passed down as an idea rather than a physical. Yeah. So that's the, the one good thing Richard Dawkins did for us. That until he became a weird meme himself. I feel like you go into the little Twitter black and white a bit sometimes with people like Richard Dawkins. He wrote a lot of good stuff as well. I know, he just really comes off as a wanker on Twitter. Yeah, he is a rank on Twitter. So EFT computers. Do I know what's an EFT computer? Well, the EFT are the fun little tentacly dudes we met in the first section who sort of blobble about. Blobble about. Blobble. Blobble about. They'd never blobbing along. Blobbing along. Oh, a little bit of bed knobs and broomsticks in

there. No one else has ever watched that. I love bed knobs and broomsticks. Oh, me too. We're not a bed knobs and broomsticks podcast. EFT computers, they never discovered electronics, but they needed computers for their complex religious banking organizations. So an ethnic computer was a thousand highly trained EFTs, each one handling a small part of the math and it worked. Pretty much how we went into space, isn't it? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's also if you think about how early commuting started. Yeah, I mean, a computer didn't mean an electronic computer until obviously we had them, but the word was. Yeah. Yeah. To computers. It was a person. A computer was a mathy, mathy person.

Yes. And somewhere in early computer design, knitting patterns came in very handy. Do I mean, I might mean weaving rather than knitting, but the idea of binary and these sort of holes punched out in the cards. There were a lot of little old ladies involved in the early days of computing. Very cool. Very cool. I saw a tangentially related. That's what I like to do. An old 80s advert of, I think 80s. Yeah, of Isaac Asimov holding up one of the pocket computers. Oh, I think it was a calculator with a couple of extra features. I didn't realize Isaac Asimov had been used as like a poster boy for a literal poster boy. He's got very big mutton chops. He looks, he looks like a Victorian transplant.

We need to find that and tweet that out to the listeners because I think you need to see that. It was on the, it was either retro, yeah, retrofuturism. Was that brought up? Oh, which is a good one. I'll link to that. Yeah. Yeah. Love retrofuturism. Oh, yes. And thanking robots. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I thought that was directly tied in. No, that's my next little bit of liked. Yes. It is mentioned that kin believes you are a gentleman if you are brought up to thank robots or a gentle person. And I was wondering, I can't believe, I can't remember if I brought this up on the podcast before. Do you thank Siri? I don't really use Siri. Do you thank your AI? Like if you are talking to, I found myself, and I'm not sure if it's just

because I'm still reasonably new to using these things, but if I go, hey, Siri, start a timer for 10 minutes, I usually go, please. Okay, 10 minutes. Thanks, Siri. How many of our listeners did we just do that to? Oh, shit, yeah, sorry. I'm just going to throw in, hey, Alexa, just to really fuck all of them off. I don't have an Alexa device in my house. See, I literally, I don't think I use any voice controlled AI ever. Okay. I've just never gotten to the habit of it, so I don't think, I do tend to say please on the rare occasions, I do. But I just don't tend to use it. Do you think it's right to do so? I know it's a bit of a silly right and wrong thing, but I do feel, I don't know, I feel like it, oh my God, I'm going to sound so old. I feel like it

encourages bad manners to allow, and I'm going to say children, because the children have been the ones I've seen doing it, just go, Alexa, do this, Alexa, do that, like they've got a butler, do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it doesn't matter, of course it doesn't matter, but it just feels inherently wrong to me. I don't think it's morally right or wrong to thank or not thank your AI. Yeah. However, and we're both obviously saying this is people who are not raising children. Or AI's. Yeah, or AI's that we know of. Fuck my sewing machine, sentient again. I do think it's right to always encourage good manners, and that includes thanking your AI's, because otherwise you would potentially encourage a habit of not saying thank

you to actual people. Disclaim that, good manners, very much discouraged when dealing with pushy older men. Yes. There is a time and a place for good manners. And it is apparently when talking to one's phone. Say that. I thank, I talk to inanimate objects a lot, and I do thank them. Yes. Often sarcastically in my case. Well, yes, true. I also swear. Thank you, microwave. I heard in the first time, I'm busy. I know I'm back in the kitchen at work. I don't really use timers and things a lot at home, but in the kitchen, there's a lot that has to be timed really strictly, especially if I've got like a morning of baking or something, which means I'll

which means I'll have sort of three or four going off at once. And I do find myself just yelling at them. It's like, yes. Which app do you use? Hmm? Which app do you use? I just use the timer on the iPhone. Because we have like a bunch of physical timers in the kitchen. Oh, okay, sure. Timers on the iPhone. It's got its limitations. If I really need more than, I think we've got two physical timers in the kitchen, I've got one on my phone. If I need four timers running at once, which is rare, but it does happen, then I'll set an alarm for the other one. Okay, sure, sure. Which is why I've now got lots of weird little alarm set like 1207 writes off. I could do actually with some physical timers because I, you know, you always need to set a timer when you've got stuff on your

hands or something, which is why I'll talk to Siri quite a lot. But that often I've got something playing through my phone in which case you can't talk to Siri. Well, yeah, I, I, it's just really rare. I have to time anything I'm cooking at home. I don't bake, I don't bake all that often. And when I do, I know how long things take. Yeah, I've usually got the thing, I've usually got Jack's meat going at the same time that I'm cooking something else. And also I'm just not the chef and don't make things as well as you do. Well, I can time it by weird tasks. It's like, I know this needs about the amount of time in the oven that it will take me to hang up a load of laundry and then put on another one. Also, it's the the ADHD thing. If I go off to hang up a load of laundry

without a timer set, your kitchen will be on fire. Yeah, it will be on fire. Yeah. Anyway, that was a tangent. Sorry, what? That was a tangent. Yeah. No, what are we doing? Talking points. That was all our little bits. Well done. That was an intersectional. No, that's not right. Well, it is, but not anymore. God damn it. A pallet cleansing tangent. There we go. Yes. That was our little pallet cleanser. Now, what's humanity? What is humanity Joanna? I don't know. Is that the talking point? Yeah, that's all I've got to say. Joanna's just going to have a small breakdown on camera. I'll finish my coffee. We'll go home and it'll be nice. We're both at home. Oh, you live there, Francine. No, okay, so I'm going to start with

my sort of case study for this discussion, all right, which is Marco trying to deal with his kunk, which is Marco trying to deal with his kunk nature versus his human nature. And the sort of series of conclusions he comes to in the book, which again, it could have had more of a conclusion and it sort of got lost in the shuffle of the last few minutes of the book. Yeah. But I like him interrogating it as we go along. And it starts with Kin and Silver having this conversation where he's, they're talking about the fact, you know, he's not physically human, but kung believes their being is determined by the place they're born, which makes him human because he was born by humans. This is kung beliefs that make him.

It's that kung belief that makes him human. And if he is human, then he doesn't believe in kind of that, then he must be a kung. And he overhears that conversation and he has to wrestle with it for the rest of this section. And sometimes his kungness really comes out when they're talking about how they're going to get Kin out of the jail cell. And one of his ideas was to just massively blow something up. And Kin was like, well, that'd kill us all. And Silver says, well, yes, but we would have won. Yeah. And although Marco is tainted by human ideas, he is kung at heart, soul. I don't know, is that kung or is that human? That sounds very much like the nuclear bloody option, doesn't it? Which it's presented as kung rather than human in the book. But

if we interrogate humanity a bit further. Oh, let's not. All right, go on, interrogate it. And this is again, you know, we get more discussions of his and human slaughter. And as you pointed out, you know, Kin is horrified it and then kind of does it herself later. Yeah. And it sort of comes to a head. Not far past that. When they're deciding whether or not to, whether to let Svando go or kill him. And Kin makes the argument, I'm pretty sure the disbuilders are human and are therefore going to respect the human attributes of mercy and fair play. And that means we should let the thing go, let Svando go, because it's what the builders and at this point, because she doesn't hear the builders are, would want. Yeah, yeah. So, so willing almost. Yeah.

Humanize oneself to them. Exactly. And this book goes into quite an interesting interrogation. I mean, it talks a lot about the fact that Kin feels like she's got a lot more kinship with Marco, with Marco and Silver than she does with the actual human beings on the desk, because they have the shared experiences that the humans on the disk wouldn't. That's very quick trauma bonding, I must say, with the whole, or not even eating in solidarity with Silver. And yeah, I like, of course, we'll land with her. And yeah, I like the bonds between the characters. I do. Yeah. Even if a lot of the time where Kin does things, it's almost like a look at how good she is. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's a little bit of a, well, this practice very much

likes having decent protagonists, doesn't it? It's just, I think usually he has a bit more time to set up the protagonist as such. Yeah, like this strong morality that he tries to instill in. And a lot of the times it is also her trying to bring out the human side of Marco. She has the idea first, because she is the more human one. And it goes into how Marco and Silver relate to her when they are both technically not human, obviously with Marco, it's dubious, but it's sort of established by the end like now, okay, so he really, really is a cunt. And this goes back to my quote early on. This idea of being cosmopolitan is relating to humans. Yes. I can't quite remember. I've noted like 20,000 fucking quotes.

Look, I wanted supporting evidence for my dissertation on the fact that I don't know what humanity is. Silver and Marco are discussing this idea of being cosmopolitan. In fact, Marco says, we've been around humans too long and we're tainted by their madness. And this is, there's another sort of thing about humans being the essential lunatic element. Yeah, yeah. And that's why, as Silver puts it, she describes being cosmopolitan as the voluntary subjugation of one's racial awareness in the light of the basic unity of sapient kind. Little bit of, little bit of earth parallel. Exactly. It means we learn to speak languages that their tongues can handle. We get along in their world. You don't see a human act like a

shander or a cunt. No. And Silver's like, can tries, can try to speak shandy at the beginning, did she not? She did. And again, this is what I mean about kin being this sort of fundamentally decent and cool. And I don't mean cool as in she's a cool girl. I mean, cool as in she gets on with everyone very well. Yeah. And Silver has this whole thing of, you know, we like humans. They take the lead and they tend to get what they want there, this essential lunatic element. And then Silver says, maybe if we didn't like humans, we'd be dead. Yes, that's it, isn't it? Rather suggest there's perhaps some species that didn't like humans, but did not survive the expansion. Yeah, so it's this weird thing of as the book interrogates

humanity. It doesn't delve into the theme as much as I'd like, it's sort of these conversations that happen, and we never really get get these conversations affecting the plot. But it is sort of this colonialism thing. It's not that everyone becomes like everyone else, it's that everyone conforms to this central ideal, which in the book is humanity, but if you look at what our actual world is, it's trying to make everyone a bit more Western. Yes. And I feel like just on the podcast list, colonialism, bad. I think we did that, but yeah, for sure. Yeah. Shaking thumbs down, still can't good. Yeah. Do you take that to an instella level? How woke are you? I answer one of the massive questions of humanity's future for me at a

moment's notice on the podcast, go on. Yeah, sure. Make it woke. Make it so nobody will disagree and cancel us. Let's try not to be dicks. Okay, that sounds good. Yeah. This is the main tenet I've mostly lived my life, but that's not true. I'm a dick. We try, I feel. I attempt it. I pull ourselves out. All of my dickheadishness is very lighthearted and well intended. Sure. Anyway, so yeah, back to the big philosophical questions when it finally comes down to what the disc needs other than, you know, a better planet being built near it and everyone being ferried over. Yeah. It's not described as needing humanity. It's described as needing sapience. Is it the person to take the chair, the person to run the disc for the committee?

They want something sapient. You know, it can't be run by a rock or a vegetable. Yeah. But they don't specify human. No. Although probably they had human in mind just by going what they seeded the planet with. Well, yeah, I mean, they sort of had this thought of human as default. And this is the whole thing it comes back to with the builders. Yes, again, it's the rug being pulled out, isn't it? It's like we're coming to this conclusion that why is human as default? And then at the end, it's like, ah, humans are default. Humans are default because they're made in the builder's image. They build planets as the builders built universes. If I was a wanker, I'd try and say

this was some kind of all subconscious admission that God must exist, but obviously. No, I don't think that's even slightly what he's going for here. It's a nice play on why you think it's a what if this is why things are the way they are? Yes, yes, yes. And obviously, it is a big what if thing was why? No. I'm trying to I'm trying to what happens when what happens why thing? Why things happen because they happen? Yes. Do you want better? Why is Gamora? Sorry, that's only funny to like five of our listeners who just rewatched all the MCU films. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, that's fine. We don't need to have Marvel Cinematic Universe. Oh, well,

I imagine more than five of our listeners, then that's not your most niche interest. God, I'm so basic. I think it was an anime. I'm a nerd girl. I like comic books. I'm a shit nerd girl. I am a very tired nerd girl. I like to scroll to make lists of interesting articles. And as we pointed out in the book, a subreddit of the day, possibly the most nerdy thing we do is write each other physical letters with wax seals set in a fictional world. Look, look, look. The real world was shit for the last year. No, the real world's still shit. Can we please keep doing this?

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. I don't have time to write back yet. Sorry. Have a day. Anyway, what are we talking about? Oh, yeah, humanity. Yeah. But I think there's something, there's a starting thing here that becomes a big pratshit theme. Like this whole idea of colonialism and being more human definitely comes up again with the dwarves and the trolls and the disc club books. But I think this idea of humans meaning people being a, basically decent and be fascinatingly curious, poking things and seeing what happens is something that comes up again and again in the disc world. And if you take it outer layer into looking at the writer, this whole thing of what happens when thing happens

and speculative fiction is what he does. He puts things into the disc and sees what works and what doesn't. This does seem to be a nice manifestation of one of one of his preferred phrases of the when the falling angel meets the rising ape. Yes. Which is one of my favorite quotes. And sort of following on from humanity, you wanted to ask what life was? Yeah. So life as being within the solar systems, life directing thing, life being a lot more abstract than you'd think if you were taking a purely carbon based view of life. And I do like that because it was going to tie in with the thing I was hoping to find and never did, which was that passage of like, what if dark matter creatures existed? Which I do know is part

of that particular Steve Baxter series. But yeah, the concept of life being what? What is it? What is it? What makes something automated? Yeah, do you define it by sapience or intelligence? Yeah, because no, obviously. Yeah, because like a sea cucumber is alive, we think. But I don't think many people would argue a sea cucumber is sapient. And really, you've been talking to the wrong sea cucumbers. I'm ashamed to say I haven't talked to any sea cucumbers at all in preparation for this episode. I'm speaking from a place of complete ignorance disclaimer. Obviously, I don't know what sea cucumbers go through. Check your sea cucumbers. It's quite problematic actually. Oh my gosh, anyway, this is a very vague rambling thing of saying, what is life actually?

Yeah, we don't have an answer for this. But if the listeners have got one on a postcard to the usual albatross. Yeah, I think it's why I liked the theory in this so much is, even though it did come tumbling down, it's one of those things that kind of breaks my brain in a nice way, not like quantum, more like, yeah. Yeah, it just keeps getting bigger. It's the Russian doll of existence. Yeah, yeah. This is like the whole tree falling in a wood thing. It gets me to the glassy-eyed stair state, which I will try not to get into during the podcast. Yes, thank you. And speaking of life, let's talk about immortality. Oh, yes, let's. You've been looking forward to talking about immortality since you first realised it was a theme in this book,

haven't you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I thought it was interesting because the distinction is here between immortality and longevity, and longevity being what each individual human is reckoning with, because he was quite careful near the beginning to say that these humans weren't expecting, nor really striving for immortality themselves, because fairly early on in the grand scheme of things at about 250, did he say? 300. Basically, the increased risk-taking behaviour eventually does for you, and that doesn't seem to be seen as a tragic thing. It doesn't seem to be something they're trying to avoid. Well, it's like with the Spindle Kings, which obviously, like I said, now we know they don't exist, but... Well, let's pretend they do. For the sake of this section,

can we pretend the last 50 pages? But the Spindle Kings, they died out because they were psychically overwhelmed, and then it's like, that's what happens on the smaller scales for the humans that try and live for a long time. Oh, yeah, with the mindquakes, that was interesting. Yeah. I want to hear more about that. What was that? I don't know, I got a headache just reading that sentence. Anyway, sorry. My point was that longevity kind of allows for the immortality, I think, in this, in the company's mindset here, the idea that humans need to be able to mature more than we currently can in order to reach the full potential. Have you read The Trouble with Lycan? No, I haven't. You talked to me about it. Yeah, you would enjoy it. It explores very similar

themes, obviously, and about the same age, right? And as well, actually, the Lycan thingy manages to get people to about 200, 300 years old, something like that. And the talking points around there are how much better humans could be. Let's think about how much older and wiser we could be if we could, you know, actualize, actualize, I like that word today. I always sound a bit mad when I talk about like, never wanting to die. No, but I do understand it. In fact, the more we've talked about it, because this has been like something that keeps coming up on the podcast for the first time recording, and you've even got me from, no, I want to die at 70 because, God, I don't want to be alive for too long. So actually, yeah, no, you're right. I do want to

be immortal. Yeah, the thing is, I don't want to linger on and I could empty black void of space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I want what I want is for aging to be stopped in some way. And again, it's not a thing. It said, I don't want my brain to degenerate. I don't want, I don't, you're not as into CGP Grey and Hello Internet and that as I am. I've listened to the old episode. Yeah. So CGP Grey, I think, is the person who managed to solidify this idea on my head the most. If anyone's interested, what you want to do is watch first CGP Grey's video, Wide Die, and then listen to episode 91 of Hello Internet, Last Man to Die. But the basic idea is that, so death as a part of life, giving life meaning is kind of the argument you

get a lot against the idea of humanity wanting to live forever. It's Stockholm Syndrome. It's us convincing ourselves that what we're in the grip of is okay because we can't see any alternative. But because of that, like, anyone who really puts like politically modern scientifically, anyone who put focus on that will be seen as a complete crackpot. Yeah. But it's going to need to happen at some point. And as we do keep making advancements and things like gene therapy, which is kind of very hinted at here, it starts becoming more possible. And I think, you know, there is a possibility that the first nearest damn immortal generation has already been born. Goddamn, you don't want to be on the

wrong side of that line. Do you think human kind would be improved if we could double our lifespan? So I'm going to give this like the unrealistic universal ability to do so because we all know if like we had some medicine tomorrow it would be hoarded and fucked with on free market capitalism. But let's just say we all suddenly we can live to 200ish instead of 80ish. I can see what the book is doing with the boredom hitting after a certain point, but I do think it would be an improvement for humanity because there's more to learn, there's more to do. Yeah. And I think, you know, in a lot of senses, we are sort of tiny terrified, panicked monkeys running around trying to put off death.

Oh, in most senses, yeah. And if you sort of take that, if you move that cliff edge further away, you put so much more in the path of that cliff edge. And I think by putting everything in that path, you lose a lot of selfishness. And I'm speaking as an incredibly selfish person, but I think of selfishness and a certain lack of empathy is where a lot of negativity in the world comes from. I don't mean like negative vibes, but a lot of things like free market capitalism and the things that we don't really like. I think by allowing longevity, you take away, you add empathy, you take away the selfishness, because you simply cannot continue experiencing things with the level of cognitive ability that we've got at, say, 30 or a completely functioning person as a 30.

I mean, us, maybe not so much. All right. No, I'm mostly functioning better than I ever have. Mostly me. Again, I'm very tired. I think by giving someone the opportunity to go on a so much more experience, you cannot help but be more sympathetic for your fellow man. I'm more worried about the state of the earth. Yeah. I think if you're thinking, well, it doesn't matter if global warming happens, it'll happen after I'm dead. That's not the same thing if you're still going to live for it. Yeah. The fact that so many massive decisions are made under short-term benefit analysis is obviously such a problem for the species, isn't it? I mean, you can, if you shrink it down, the fact that so many

businesses make quarter-to-quarter decisions for shareholder reasons is to detriment of a lot of those businesses and then scale it up on a worldwide scale. Yeah, absolutely. I don't have grandchildren to think about. And even people who do obviously want to bear-speed grandchildren or your potential great-grandchildren, but the further you get away, the less real that seems. It's also interesting, impossible to imagine. I can't imagine 100 years from now. Oh, no, absolutely. Of course not. Yeah. No. But I want to, yeah. But I would like to see it, yeah. I don't like cliffhanger. It's all about this genre. I don't, I've got massive FOMO. I've got eternal FOMO. I don't want to miss out what

happens, although I've been watching Futurama because I needed a very brainless background binge. Oh, harsh, harsh. It's actually a good show. I forgot how good and how funny it was in places. I love Futurama. But, you know, as I was saying, what's going to happen in the year 3000? Not much has changed, but they live under water. Sorry. I tried really hard not to. I was the same as that the other day. I put my terrible pop playlist back on. What's it called? Ridiculous Pop, the one I made to move you from house to house. Yeah. It's a very good playlist. We've tangented. Do you have a conclusion to come back to on the nature of immortality? Oh, wait. Oh, no, I've just got busted in my head.

Shit. Basically, I think that we should absolutely be striving to live longer and fight age as a kind of degenerative disease more than an inevitability. And I think we should stop looking at people who think otherwise as crackpots just because it sounds massively superbilliny. That's not where we're coming from. Ignore this long haired white cat that I'm gently stroking. Ignore the monocle I've suddenly materialized onto my face, not a supervillain. Genuinely concerned for the future of humanity and my own fear of missing out. I promise this is not coming from a place of supervillaining. But no, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die. To tie it back into the book. Yes, please. That we are apparently discussing. There's a sort of thought process that King goes

too early on with the Bjorn Chang and the settlers. I mean, she thinks about... Still a really good bad name, yeah. I see it. She thinks about the fact they're going to settle on this planet. They won't have gene therapy there. They will live normal human lifespans. And their version of longevity, longevity, longevity, the words lost all meaning, is to have children and pass them down and build a civilization from scratch. Legacy, yeah. Yes, exactly. Their version of longevity is legacy. People do seem to have a natural inclination towards that as a comforting mechanism, and I simply do not. Yes, I have absolutely no desire to leave a legacy on the basis of offspring. No, or anything else, to be honest. Well, obviously I would like to leave the world a better place

than I came in. But the kind of core concept actually that thrives a lot of the progress here is something missing from me, unfortunately, which the idea that leaving your mark on the universe is the comforting factor. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Anyway, yeah. So that's their version of legacy. When you come out to the bigger spectrum of the builders building and then the humans building and creating the planets, the reason humans built and spread out across the entire universe building these planets was not to develop gene therapy in days and live for three or 400 years. It was to make humanity immortal. Yes. And again, it was it was always about legacy as longevity. It was never about living for 400 years. Yes. And I think that's

an interesting way to look at immortality because neither of us have that driving thing of legacy and we both are driven a lot more by FOMO. Yeah, anyone who does like have a have that driving course we would be interested to hear from, I think. Yes, send us your thoughts on immortality and legacy via rock if you don't have any albatross available. Yes, not like through the window like the legendary bird. Yeah, I wish that was pronounced slightly differently. Or just like emails like a rock. What do I mean? Oh, yeah, you know, you can email us. That's an option. Sure, why not? Anyway, I don't have anything more to say on that. Do you? No, no, cool. I think I've ranted enough for now.

Have you got an obscure reference video for me? Well, yes, perhaps a little more ranting. This is only very vaguely tied to the book. Going to be honest, probably not the best obscure reference I could have chosen, but it connects to something really cool. So I'm going to give it so when they are talking about communicating with humans on disk or getting information out. Silver says, Marco, slugs a likely looking object flies him over here and knocks this shit out of him until I've heard enough. That's the technique. Oh yeah. And Kin says, it's not like drawing circles in the sand, is it? I feel like that was a reference to a specific thing of like drawing circles and sand to communicate with each other. That sounds

very familiar to me on a. It was also mentioned earlier in the book. When they first land and meet Erickson and that lot, and Kin says, she, if they don't have a common language, she'll have to draw circles and sand. Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn't like explained as to. Oh no, it wasn't explained. It was just communicating with other cultures via circles in the sand. I was like, that phrase sounds really familiar. And like, unfortunately, as always, Google is ruined by pop culture and some like 80 song called circle and sand flooded it. And I didn't have time to get through that. But I did a slightly different branch of searching and there's something called a Vanuatu sand circles Vanuatu sand drawings. So in that,

you know, South Pacific Vanuatu Islands. Yeah. Archipelago. Archipelago. Thank you. No, I'm just pleased to see. There's like 80 different language groups in that thing. Yeah. And a way they communicate with each other is via sand drawing. So they can make, yeah, yeah, it's really cool. So they can like communicate meaning through these complex and very beautiful and I say sand drawings. And so it can be like ritual communications or just like, like feelings and stuff like it's really very cool. But that is cool. But what's cooler is where I found out about it is this website called but it's under the UN UNESCO. And it is called the list of intangible cultural heritage.

Intangible cultural heritage. Right. That name. Right. Anyway, this is massive list of really cool intangible cultural heritage stuff that I found about 10 minutes before I needed to start setting up for this recording. So I haven't looked through this properly, but I'm going to link it and I think you will as well. And this looks like a fantastic procrastination slash research tool. Excellent. I'm very excited about that. That sounds so cool. So yeah, that's that. Awesome. Well, I think with that, we've said, there's not, there's like a million more things I could say about this book, but we've said everything we've got time to say about Strata. Pratchett's third discord novel. He's not a

discord novel. Pratchett's third novel, proto discord novel, just used to putting the word discord in front of a novel. Dickens famous discord novel, great expectations. Anyway, yeah. So we are going to come back on the 25th of May with some fun bonus content for your ears. Sort of like cash stuff. Very cash. We might chance a bit about a couple of the essays from a slip of the keyboard. And then we will be back properly on the disc on the 7th of June with part one of our discussion of soul music, which I'm really excited about. A few days before my birthday, just in case my birthday is on the 10th, in case you know, for the listeners, for the listeners. One more to wish me a happy birthday. You don't have to do

that. However, listening to the end of this podcast, enter into a contract, side effects. Anyway, thank you for, thank you for listening to The True Shall Make You Fract. If you would like to contact us with anything, including birthday wishes for me, you can. You can follow us on Instagram at The True Shall Make You Fract on Twitter at Make You Fract Pod. You can join us on Facebook at The True Shall Make You Fract. Join our subreddit community, r slash ttsmyf. You can send us your thoughts, queries, castles, albatrosses and snaps, The True Shall Make You Fract Pod at gmail.com. And if you would like to support us financially and get a little bit of bonus nonsense for your trouble, you can go to patreon.com forward slash The True Shall Make You

Fract. As always, please don't forget to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast, especially Apple Podcast, because it helps other people find us. And we like it when they do that, provided it's to listen to the podcast. Yeah, yeah, don't like find us. If you are an anglerfish, please don't turn up on my doorstep. Shlop, shlop. Oh, that's what I call a nice circular. Podcast. Yeah. Alright, and in the meantime, dear listener, kin thought about the second edition, the ship fell onwards into the scenery. It's a bit of a fucking messy end of this book, to be honest.